News Stories

March
2004: E-mail Newsletter Subscription now Available

YES is pleased to offer an e-mail newsletter to anyone who
wishes to subscribe. The newsletter will contain news about Yankee
Environmental Systems, specials, and tips to keep your instruments and
equipment in good condition. Subscribing is easy- just click
here and enter your e-mail address.

November
2003: Yankee Environmental Systems announces the launch of
an enhanced technical support website

YES is committed to enhancing the process for requesting and
receiving technical support and improving your overall
satisfaction. This is why we have launched a new area of our
website called YES Support
Center. Registered users are now able to browse and search a
knowledgebase, and can submit a support request.
Support requests are saved in each user's account and the user can view
the status or re-open them if necessary. Click
here to register now!

October
2003: NCAR Selects Yankee Environmental Systems as the exclusive
manufacturer of the Hotplate

Yankee has been awarded a manufacturing license for
hotplate precipitation gauge technology originally developed and
patented by The National Center for Atmospheric Research of Boulder, CO
and the Desert Research Institute of Reno, NV. This rugged
meteorological sensor can measure precipitation rates in real time with
no moving parts. It works by electronically maintaining the temperature
of two back-to-back round plates at a constant temperature above ambient
and measuring the difference of the power required to hold them at this
temperature. Falling precipitation cools the upward facing plate more,
while wind cools both plates evenly

Important applications include surface precipitation
meteorology and deicing operations that require knowledge of the
thermodynamic state of current atmospheric wet precipitation. YES has
begun accepting orders for its Model TPS-3100 Total Precipitation Sensor
while verification testing in NCAR wind tunnels continues in
parallel. Browse the YES Hotplate Product Announcement
or the Data Sheet.

Read how this new technology can increase safety in
rain and snow. Click here.

May
2003: Department of Commerce (DOC), National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) awards YES a Phase I Small Business
Innovation Research (SBIR) Grant

NOAA has awarded YES
a Phase I SBIR grant to develop "Dropsondes Using Innovative Integrated
Fabrication Technologies". Dropsondes deployed from either
aircraft or balloons remain a key tool for observing the atmospheric
state with high vertical resolution. They are used in both weather
research and operational forecasting, having become an integral part of
the National Weather
Service (NWS) winter storms observation program and NOAA Office
of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) short term severe weather
forecasting efforts.

December
2002: Fox 25 TV in Boston story on Meteorological Emergency Response
Vehicle

As part of their "How Weather Works" series and Homeland
Security feature, meteorologist Kevin Lemanowicz of Fox
25 TV in Boston interviewed YES meteorologist Bill Bauman about the
"MERV". Check out the video here:

Promo for the story

Full story

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June
2002: Department of Energy (DOE) awards YES 2 Phase I Small Business
Innovation Research (SBIR) Grants

The DOE has awarded YES 2 Phase I SBIR grants. The first step is to
develop a novel constant-chopper scanning radiometer and the second is
to develop a solid-state irradiance calibrator for field use. Award of
these projects by DOE continues to prove YES's expertise as a world
leader in radiometry.

May
2002: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) awards
YES Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grant

NOAA has awarded YES a Phase I SBIR grant to develop an automated
sonde-launching system adaptable to use on shipboard and land-based
platforms. To accommodate a variety of field applications, the system
will combine mobility with ease of installation, operations, and
maintenance. This award will enable YES to continue to expand into the
operational upper air meteorological market.

February
2002: YES working with Space Data Corporation (SDC) on Auto Launcher

We're currently working on developing our Automated Radiosonde
Launcher to support SDC's efforts to provide a "wireless network in
the sky". Click here
to read more about SDC's plans to provide fill gaps in wireless coverage
by attaching repeaters to weather balloons. Click here
to read more about our Automated Radiosonde Launcher (ARL).

We've expanded our hygrometry line with several new options to
provide more customer flexibility. Of particular note is an expanded OEM
line of products utilizing DSP technology. All the products can be seen here.

Two former US Air Force officers joined YES this fall after 20-year
careers as meteorologists with Air Force Weather. Both retired Lieutenant
Colonels, Dave Sautter and Bill Bauman bring a wealth of experience from
the Federal Government and Department of Defense to YES.

April
2001: U.S.
Department of Energy deems TSI-880 a "Standard ARM Instrument"

At its spring science team meeting,
DOE researchers officially made the TSI-880 a standard ARM instrument. This
means DOE will budget for maintenance and support of the TSI-880
into the future. What is politically significant here is that the TSI had to
first demonstrate it could augment the far more expensive Whole Sky
Imagers that ARM owns. It did this throughout 2000 by demonstrating
excellent up time and reliability.

In addition to the TSI-880 operating at the CART site, the DOE has three additional YES TSI-880 sky imagers for its other
Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM)
sites in the Tropical Western Pacific and North Slope of Alaska. YES has
a long association with supporting ARM
science goals - for more information about ARM,
visit www.arm.gov.

Based on its commercial success with the Total Sky Imager family,
under a competitive selection process MTC
singled YES out from many other Massachusetts high tech companies for
this SBIR
award. The TSI family grew out of a 1996 USDA
SBIR program grant. The TSI has been adopted by several US
government and international agencies. In the US, the FAA, NOAA, US Navy
and DOE have each
ordered TSI-880's for various applications. Over the past decade YES has
received four Phase II awards from the USDA. The company's highly
successful UVMFR-7 instrument also grew out of one of these programs and
now forms the cornerstone of the US governments' UV-B
Monitoring program.

The DoD has awarded YES a Phase I SBIR R&D program to develop an
advanced networked meteorological system for the US Armed Services. This technology will
help modernize surface observations by utilizing the internet as a
mechanism to move data. In the 1960's, while at Cambridge Systems Inc.
(now Edgetech) founders of YES designed the TMQ/22 Tactical Measuring
set for the US Army. The TMQ/22 and other later TMQ systems have been
used for many years. YES is working in
cooperation with researchers at White
Sands Missile Range and Virginia Tech on this project.

In addition to showing off its new booth, YES engineers presented five
instrumentation papers at the 81st annual
meeting of the American Meteorological Society in Albuquerque, New
Mexico in January 2001. The topics of the papers represented
current research programs underway at YES:

Comparison of Two Imager-Based Methods for Determination of Winds
Aloft

A Pyroelectric Detector-Based Nulling Infrared Radiometer

An Isothermal Pyranometer Incorporating Detection and Elimination
of Error Due to Dome Radiation

The first three were also talks at the meeting (order "11th
Meteorological Observations" proceedings from AMS).

Come visit YES at booth #108 at next year's 2002 AMS meeting.

October
2000: U.S.
Department of Energy orders RSS-1024 and additional TSI-880s for ARM
Sites

After several years of testing prototype versions of the visible
rotating shadowband spectroradiometer (RSS), developed jointly by YES
engineers and scientists at the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center (ASRC)
in Albany, New York, the U.S. DOE has
ordered a commercial RSS-1024 for its Southern Great Plains Clouds and
Radiation Testbed site in northeastern Oklahoma.

In addition to the TSI-880 operating at the CART site, the DOE has
also ordered three additional YES TSI-880 sky imagers for its other
Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM)
sites in the Tropical Western Pacific and North Slope of Alaska. YES has
a long association with supporting ARM
science goals - for more information about ARM,
visit www.arm.gov.

October
2000: YES
on the Cover of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

A photo on the cover of Octoberís Bulletin of the American
Meteorological Society shows a TSI-440 at a National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Association (NOAA) Surface Radiation (SURFRAD) site in
Desert Rock, Nevada. That issue includes an comprehensive article on the
SURFRAD network, which also operates YES Ultraviolet Pyranometers (Model
UVB-1) and Multifilter Rotating Shadowband Radiometers (Model MFR-7).
For more information on SURFRAD, click on the image below:

SURFRAD site at Desert Rock, Nevada, USA as seen on the October 2000
cover of BAMS

October
2000: New
Winds Aloft Algorithms for TSI-880

An ongoing experiment at the Atmospheric Sciences Research
Center/National Weather Service office in Albany, New York is attempting
to derive winds aloft using YES Total Sky Imagers. YES has installed two
TSI-880s: one co-located with a Vaisala Model CT25K ceilometer (owned by
ASRC); the second TSI-880 a mile away. All three instruments are
networked to a central YESDAQ database. Click on
yesdaq2.asrc.cestm.albany.edu
for data collected by these instruments. By comparing images from the
two TSI-880s located a mile apart, YES engineers are working on
algorithms to derive winds aloft or wind speed. YES is comparing the
results of using two TSI-880s versus one TSI-880 with ASRC's ceilometer.
YES is also trying to calculate cloud height using two TSI-880s, a much
more difficult task. YES presented a paper at the 81st
annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in Albuquerque,
New Mexico in January 2001 (see below).

October
2000: YES
Demonstrates TSI-880 and MET-2010 at Several Meetings This Fall

YES engineers have attended several meetings this fall to demonstrate
the companyís latest products: the Total Sky Imager Model TSI-880 and
the Meteorological Thermohygrometer Model MET-2010. Some of the meetings
included the National Weather Service, Air and Waste Management, and the
Nuclear Meteorological Userís Group. If you didnít get a chance to
see us at one of these meetings, look for us at the 81st
annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in Albuquerque,
New Mexico in January 2001, Booth #940.

May
2000: YES Wins Ship Meteorology SBIR

NOAA has awarded a Phase I SBIR R&D award to YES to develop shipboard weather sensor systems. This technology will
modernize the "volunteer
observations from ships" (VOS) program that gathers critically
needed weather data from merchant marine vessels. YES is working in
cooperation with researchers at Woods Hole observatory on this project.

May
2000: YES Wins Acid Rain SBIR

NOAA has awarded a Phase I SBIR R&D award to YES to improve precipitation collection systems for monitoring acid rain. The
US government has been collecting rain water from nearly 200 sites
across the country as part of its multi-agency acid rain monitoring
program, the National Acid Deposition Program (NADP). For the past 25
years, NADP has not updated their rainwater collection systems. This SBIR
involves designing new collection systems that can potentially be
scalable to handle multiple vessels in support of new studies on
mercury. YES is working with scientists at Colorado State
University/Fort Collins' Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory and also
researchers at Penn State University on this project.

April
2000: YES Wins Fiber Met Sensor SBIR

The US Navy has awarded a Phase I SBIR R&D award to YES to develop all-optical
meteorological weather sensors, in partnership with Virginia Tech's
Fiber Electro Optical Research Center (FEROC). The US Navy has awarded YES a six month $70,000 R&D SBIR contract
to develop fiberoptic meteorological sensors that can potentially
measure winds, temperature, pressure and humidity. The US Navy is
particularly interested in the fiber optic sensor technology because it potentially eliminates corrosion, EMI,
and EMP problems that warships must endure.

November
1998: Spain
chooses YES UVB-1 for its UV monitoring network

After a very competitive selection process, the Spain has selected YES
broadband pyranometers for its country-wide UV monitoring program.
Similar to the YES UVB-1 network in Greece and the US, up to 18 stations will be outfitted with these instruments
across Spain to keep the public informed of UV levels.